Okay, in my 50 years on Earth, every roll of household toilet paper I’ve ever seen is the same size. Standardized, if you will, to fit every toilet paper holder.
So why does almost every brand advertise itself as being “double roll, twice as much as regular rolls”?
And if every brand is “double roll”, who the hell are they contrasting themselves with?
I started to say they are comparing themselves with the standard, but yeah Double Cottonelle is not 2x the standard.
Cottonelle 165 1-Ply sheets per roll
Cottonelle Double Roll 208 1-Ply sheets per roll
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Cottonelle-Clean-Care-Bathroom-Tissue-Double-Rolls-208-Sheets-24-Rolls/24491241
Cottonelle Mega Roll 380 1-Ply sheets per roll
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Cottonelle-Clean-Care-Mega-Roll-Toilet-Paper-380-sheets-12-rolls/49883726
Keep in mind that if a double roll is defined as twice as many sheets, it will only be slightly larger in diameter than the normal roll. As the roll gets larger, each layer gets longer. Someone else can do the math but a double roll will not be double the diameter. You might not notice a difference unless they were side by side.
Depends on how you measure. Zoom in on the labels and you’ll see
Cottonelle 165 1-ply sheets = 231 sq. ft.
Cottonelle Double Roll 208 1-ply sheets = 525.6 sq. ft.
Cottonelle Mega Roll 380 1-ply sheets = 481.2 sq. ft.
“Double rolls” aside, Wikipedia claims
Those are for all rolls in the pack.
Cottonelle 165 1-ply sheets = 231 sq. ft./12 rolls 19 sq ft/roll
Cottonelle Double Roll 208 1-ply sheets = 525.6 sq. ft./24 rolls ** 21.9 sq ft/roll**
Cottonelle Mega Roll 380 1-ply sheets = 481.2 sq. ft./12 rolls 40.1 sq ft /roll
There are about nine sheets per square foot.
I’m not really that concerned if the comparison might be slightly exaggerated, as long as “double roll” means “way bigger than standard” which, as pointed out, would be only slightly larger diameter. The fewer roll changes, the better.
Interestingly the last couple of batches of Cashmere 2-ply I got on sale claim 30 rolls to be equal to 50 “normal” rolls, not 60, so they’re either making them smaller now or have suddenly had an attack of honesty.
The larger rolls are noticeably larger in diameter, but not greatly. Some of them do fit rather tightly into some dispensers. OTOH, as noted above, rolls are getting gradually narrower over the years.
Ultimately, the length of the rolls increases towards infinity, while the width decreases towards zero. We studied a mathematical model like this in Differential Equations. It’s called the Dirac Delta Function.
So at some point we’ll be using several yards of thin string. I can’t wait. :rolleyes:
I always divide the price by the square feet listed on the package and buy whatever comes out to the lowest cents per square foot. The 1000 sheet/roll brands win, and you can sure tell it by the weight of the package.
The core size makes a difference too:
Kimberly-Clark (the makers of Kleenex brand products) is going a step farther: They are eliminating the core altogether in their “Scott Naturals” brand of toilet paper.
Fun fact: The article claims that 17 billion toilet paper cores are thrown away each year!
The biggest difference is compared to the 2-ply rolls. For the same bulk, you can indeed get twice as many sheets on a 1-ply roll as on a 2-ply roll. Probably more than twice, since the 2-ply are usually quilted, too, so they won’t roll as tightly.
And thereby, incidentally, finally extinguishing a SDMB meme that the mods have been trying to stamp out for a long time.
This explains the popularity of thong underwear. It is being pushed by the toilet paper manufacturers.
Bidets are the ultimate goal, with monthly “residuals” paid to Kimberly-Clark, Scott, etc.
One of the ways they make Charmin, et al, so squeezable is by wrapping the paper loosely on the roll. Which means less linear feet for the same outside diameter.
Funny how their costs are driven by linear feet, but many people buy by visual size thinking that bigger = more.
There’s no chance that’s a deliberate attempt to mislead… is it :eek: ?
My take on “double roll” is that there was some more or less industry standard roll size back in 1962 that the first double rolls truly doubled. Since then every roll is labeled double or bigger regardless of reality.
If one assumes that the number of sheets is proportional to the area of the side surface of the roll (which I think is a reasonable assumption as long as all sheets have the same width and length), then a roll with twice as many sheets would have a diameter which is bigger by a factor of the square root of 2, i.e., about 1.41, since the area grows with the square of the radius.
You can still get single rolls, if you buy the cheap stuff. It’s noticeably narrower in diameter. There’s also triple rolls and “jumbo” rolls or whatever they call them, that are noticeably larger than the double rolls. There may have been an industry standard back in the day, but there clearly isn’t now, with TP not only varying in number of sheets, quilting, diameter, but also width and as mentioned above, inner diameter too (when they remove the cardboard tube).
Not such a great assumption as there is typically a hole down the axis of the cylinder, a tube made of cardboard that is uniform for single or double rolls.
If the hole at the core scaled with size then root two along with the paper then the math would still make sense; instead, the volume of the cardboard tube is constant and only the paper volume is doubled. As the total volume of the (hole+paper) cylinder is less then doubled, the diameter change is less than a factor of root 2.